Kickboard helps schools and districts establish a performance-based, collaborative culture

New Orleans, Louisiana, November 27, 2012 – Kickboard, a school analytics platform that goes beyond the gradebook and enables educators to create comprehensive student performance profiles, announced today that it is making free “Starter Accounts” available to teachers. Any K-12 educator or teams of up to three teachers at a school can now start using Kickboard in and across their classrooms at no charge.

Teachers in nearly 200 schools across 20 states are already using Kickboard to collect, analyze and share mission-critical data, including multiple assessments, standards mastery, reading growth, 21st century skills, parent communication and, most uniquely, student behavior and character strengths. Kickboard keeps track of performance through one-click behavior data capture, easy-to-read charts and graphs and immediate student performance reporting via customizable progress reports. The starter accounts provide much of the same features and functionality as Kickboard’s school-wide platform.

Melinda Snover is a teacher and data coach who has been implementing Kickboard across Stella Worley Middle School in New Orleans this year. She says Kickboard helps her teachers share information across classrooms, pinpoint how to individualize their instruction, and identify success. “We’re celebrating the fact that we are changing. We are collaborating, our classrooms are totally different, our teaching is so targeted and focused, and our mastery is higher.”

A vision of this kind of cross-classroom collaboration inspired CEO and founder Jennifer Medbery to create Kickboard. A former teacher, Medbery saw the need to share both academic achievement and student behavior data and also easily analyze that information and make it actionable.

Kickboard seeks to eliminate common barriers to creating a data-driven culture, for example the feeling of being swamped with data without a single platform to compile and share it. Kickboard is that single, secure solution that can help teacher-leaders and district administrators simply and quickly establish and maintain a performance-based culture across a school. The platform can be deployed in a single classroom or across an entire district and is a flexible tool that fosters a transparent, collaborative, growth-minded environment. Teachers have found that it creates a school culture where expectations are clearly set, measured and maintained through collaboration between teachers, administrators and parents.

“After hearing about the experience of their friends and colleagues at Kickboard schools, teachers have been requesting a way to use the platform without having to wait for school-wide adoption,” said Medbery. “We’re launching the Starter Accounts in an effort to give these teachers and other innovative, results-driven educators grounds-up, immediate access to Kickboard so now they too can support data-driven teaching, facilitate collaboration and advance a culture of performance at their school. Teachers need every available tool at their disposal to increase student success and improve outcomes.”

Starter Account sign-up is a quick and simple process. Individual teachers can begin to use Kickboard immediately with up to 150 students across their classroom or in teams of up to three teachers (total participation per school is limited to three teachers). The platform is designed to support a performance-based culture across an entire school or district, and premium, customized features are available with a software upgrade. To claim their free Kickboard starter account, teachers should visit: http://www.kickboardforteachers.com/signup

For educators who want to learn more, Medbery will be hosting two live tutorials on Thursday, November 29 at 2:30 EST and 4:30 EST. This is an opportunity for teachers who have already signed up for the Starter Accounts to learn how to optimize its use. The sessions will also help those unfamiliar with Kickboard get a tour of the platform and develop a better understanding of how it can help establish a performance-based culture. To register for one of the tutorials, visit: http://kickboardforteachers.com//webinar

About Kickboard;
Kickboard is a school analytics platform that goes beyond the gradebook and enables teachers to collect, analyze and share critical data, including multiple assessments, standards mastery, reading growth and, most uniquely, student behavior and character strengths. The platform is built by educators for educators and offers a simple yet powerful web-based dashboard to increase the real-time visibility of student performance across classrooms. Unlike traditional gradebooks, Kickboard tracks whole student performance and features traditional and standards-based grading, one-click behavior data capture, easy to read charts and graphs and immediate student performance reporting, including customizable, painless report cards. The platform advances a school’s performance-driven culture by setting and measuring school expectations and norms and facilitating collaboration between teachers, administrators and parents. Delivered as an on-demand solution, Kickboard can easily be integrated with a school’s SIS, and deployed in a single classroom or across an entire district. For more information, visit kickboardforteachers.com.

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